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The kids were a self-selected group because attending the school required that the parents had to do something active to get their kids into this school. They

The kids were a self-selected group because attending the school required that the parents had to do something active to get their kids into this school. They try to control for this by comparing those kids to kids who lost in the lottery. But this only tells us about kids who have engaged parents. You cannot generalise to kids who have non-engaged parents. Having engaged parents is the single most important condition for getting a good education. Secondly, not having disruptive kids in class. And only thirdly are quality of teachers. If "free dental, medical, and mental health services" were all it took, then no school in Scandinavia should have any problem with poor kids. But we do have problems because some parents don't care at all about their kids education.

croon 8y ago
> They try to control for this by comparing those kids to kids who lost in the lottery. But this only tells us about kids who have engaged parents. You cannot generalise to kids who have non-engaged parents. > Having engaged parents is the single most important condition for getting a good education. If that was true then there would be no significant difference between the students in the study, since all of them had engaged parents.
- jstanley 8y ago
  Just because something is the most important condition doesn't make it the only important condition.
  - croon 8y ago
    But it makes it the most significant condition. It was in the stated initial premise. And if they're all important (according to GPs list) then maybe more expensive teachers, better properties/real estate, supplies, etc is important enough anyways.
    - jstanley 8y ago
      > > Having engaged parents is the single most important condition for getting a good education. > If that was true then there would be no significant difference between the students in the study, since all of them had engaged parents. This does not follow. Just because something is the most significant condition doesn't mean that two things meeting that condition will have no significant differences. EDIT: For example, let's say breathing is the single most important thing to do in order to stay alive. That doesn't mean eating isn't important to do as well. If two people breathe, but only one of them eats, they will have significant differences in outcome even though they both met the single most important condition.
      - croon 8y ago
        Sure, but OP ranked them specifically to downplay the effect of teachers (and other factors caused by wealth). You can't have it both ways. Either engaged parents is significantly more important, or the other factors are still very important. And this discussion is entirely sidestepping the fact that OPs list is entirely arbitrary.
      - phil21 8y ago
        I think this is pretty simple and folks are talking over each other. Involved parenting is a blocker issue, not just a critical one. There may be other critical issues in the queue, but those are blocked on that first one. So the other issues being resolved may not matter at all if the first isn't completed first. That's more or less how I see GPs argument. My rather diverse education background certainly lets me see that hypothesis as absolutely true - but I have my own personal biases due to experiences.
- wskinner 8y ago
  Your claim is not true. If you factor out the most significant variable, some other variable becomes the most significant one.
  - croon 8y ago
    Yeah, maybe more expensive teachers, for example.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      Or more talented kids.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Richer or more connected parents maybe
- silvestrov 8y ago
  > there would be no significant difference between the students in the study I didn't say this. I say that you can't generalise to students NOT in the study, i.e. students with parents who didn't care to participate in the lottery.
  - croon 8y ago
    Of course you can. You can control for the factor/variable you said was the "single most important", which is done through the design of the study, by your own admission. And then look at results from the other factors. Whether your factor is important or not doesn't even enter the picture.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Essentially this. It's not really the schools or teachers - they are generally decent. Some better than others ... but teaching is not rocket science. Basic education is not some magical, mysterious thing. It's mostly straightforward, and a little mundane. If you have decent students, prepared to learn a bit - which mostly comes from a reasonably positive and stable home - then all you need is basic things to get them to a decent level of literacy. Surely some systems are better than others but I think it's far more about homes and communities than it is dumping 'bad teachers' and certainly not about making teaching 'competitive'.
- andy_ppp 8y ago
  >>> but teaching is not rocket science I actually think teaching children is a really difficult and important part of society but I think many people don't value the contribution incredible teaching can make to individual students lives. A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve. Not commenting on the quality of this study however.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    I didn't say it was easy, or that it wasn't hard work, or that I didn't value it. Teaching is 'hard work', it requires educated, dedicated people, and it's very important work. But it's not rocket science. Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject, though they may not have the wherewithal or stamina to stick it out, or may not have the empathy/social skills to do it well.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Being a schoolteacher is risky - kids kill themselves over things that happen at school, or they metaphorically throw their life away with other stupid actions. A good, engaged teacher can help to steer children through that minefield. It's not just about teaching a subject. The idea that one only needs to be good at a subject to teach it well is bunkum. It's not rocket surgery, it's potentially far more important.
kinleyd 8y ago
I appreciate the first point which I believe is a vital factor. Regarding the order of the second and third though, wouldn't the quality of teachers determine whether there are disruptive kids in the class in the first place?
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  Not likely. My sister teaches in a magnate school in a poor urban U.S. district. The amount of bad behavior with which she must contend is shocking. It's entirely foreign to me from our childhood, and she has relatively little freedom in how she can handle chronically problematic students. If it is theoretically possible for the teachers to keep the disruption level low enough for much learning to happen, then the formula is a secret. It's very depressing, and it has left many teachers bitter, burned out, and I suspect more racist.
  - kinleyd 8y ago
    Yes, I see what you mean - it's easy for the collective level of class disruption to overwhelm the teacher, however good he/she may individually be.
  - croon 8y ago
    > Not likely. My sister teaches in a magnate school in a poor urban U.S. district. Couldn't we draw the conclusion then that wealth plays an important role? Which in turn also affects the pay of the teachers in the area, also affecting the quality of said teachers? > It's very depressing, and it has left many teachers bitter, burned out, and I suspect more racist. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, but what I think is depressing is that it leads to racism, instead of anger over systemic inequality.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - your-nanny 8y ago
      The teachers who can't hack it, or don't care enough to stay at the bad schools leave. Good riddance, right? Most of the teachers at bad schools I've met are good teachers.
ThomPete 8y ago
Yup. Good teacher don't scale. My son is in a charter school the controversial Success Academy which do really well (top 3% in new york state) even with kids who are homeless and living in shelters. But this is because 1) Parents have to apply for the lottery and if they get in they have to be engaged 2) School is run almost like a Catholic school in how strict it is (but with a much more effective reward/punishment system) 3) Teachers aren't part of the union which means they can fire bad teachers. They are also fairly young. This is a very different school than the one I attended in Denmark where I grew up but I have to say it's working remarkedly well. My hope is that the school will provide my boys with an understanding of self-discipline and then I will take them to a more free-form school (like alt school) in the second part of their educational lives so that they can benefit from the freedom to explore and find their own perspectives using their basic skills (reading, writing, math & music) Have no idea if this will work but that's how I am going to do it.
gameswithgo 8y ago
Assuming it is the case that quality schools will only work for the subset of kids with engaged parents, that is still a huge net positive. We should make every school high quality. I'm not sure why anyone is opposed to this idea. >Secondly, not having disruptive kids in class. If that turns out to be the 2nd order thing we can make that happen with sufficient effort too.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  > We should make every school high quality. I'm not sure why anyone is opposed to this idea. In the abstract I don't think anyone is; what's contentious is what measures make a school "high-quality."
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    And what the cost is. We can reduce traffic fatalities to zero by lowering speed limits to 25 and building cars like tanks, but we don't. Why not? It's not a reasonable expense to achieve the goal. Everyone wants to do better. Just because people don't agree on means doesn't mean they are cold hearted bastards or something.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      ==We can reduce traffic fatalities to zero by lowering speed limits to 25 and building cars like tanks, but we don't. Why not? It's not a reasonable expense to achieve the goal.== Except we have lowered speed limits and mandated security measures on cars, just not to the arbitrary level you stated. We followed scientific studies that showed positive results of lower speed limits in certain areas and implemented car safety requirements for manufacturers.
      - humanrebar 8y ago
        Right, but 40,000 people still died from traffic accidents in the U.S. in 2017. To get that number to zero, the U.S. might have to drastic things that probably wouldn't be a good tradeoff. The existence of a discussion about tradeoffs and costs doesn't mean that some people are anti-safe-driving or something.
emodendroket 8y ago
> If "free dental, medical, and mental health services" were all it took, then no school in Scandinavia should have any problem with poor kids. But we do have problems because some parents don't care at all about their kids education. It is probably true that those aren't sufficient, but things like getting enough to eat and not having serious, untreated dental or medical problems are basic prerequisites to a good education that aren't met for a lot of American children.
- mlillie 8y ago
  Also worth considering that the vast majority of parents who don't care simply can't afford to care. Working 2+ jobs, they may not have the time or emotional effort to invest in the same way that more privileged parents with elaborate PTO schemes have access to. Free dental & medical (Medicare for All or similar) would go a long way to alleviating the pressure on parents and allow them the space and time to care. As would stronger labor laws to ensure all workers have access to a reasonably flexible working environment.
vinceguidry 8y ago
Man, when I listen to my mom tell me all the things she does for my sister's kids, who she's raising, it boggles my mind, and makes me a little jealous. With all she's doing, there's no way those kids can't not succeed in school, yet it's a level of effort that really precludes having a career. Engaged, stay-at-home parents amazingly raise the quality of life, not just of kids, but of entire neighborhoods and it's one of those things that you can't fake or buy cheaply.
Bartweiss 8y ago
As De Boer puts it, if there's any possibility at all that an education result came from sample bias, it's definitely sample bias. The standard narrative for "better schools" is that a trial program works great, everyone gets excited, and then it declines to mean the instant it's expanded. If they had lotteried people in entirely at random and still gotten better outcomes, I'd at least be curious. https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/ https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-t...
Herodotus38 8y ago
There was a good blog post and discussion about your point here on HN 9 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15007942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15007942
nunya213 8y ago
Outside the US most public school systems are vastly more successful narrowing the education gap between rich and poor students.
Karishma1234 8y ago
This comment is gold. Sample bias might be at play here and still that is encouraging. Poor people do not love to be poor and are actively looking to get out of poverty. One of the ways they do this is by taking unusual risks and imitation. (Trust me I was poor). Public education system takes away both these tools from them. The school you will go to will be determined based on where you live and nothing else. Because of this stupid constraint you lose a very critical market signals that other schools could have used to filter out better kids and nurture them better. I think poor children should have access to charter and private schools too but those schools should have 100% freedom to discriminate. Say for every certified poor kid that is admitted to private/charter school government gives a $10K voucher and you can admit only at max 25% of total capacity with such students. The poor kids and their parents line up outside the school. They have to prove that they are worthy of the seat by showing things that matter to the school. E.g. my kid is not a bully, parents of the kids have no criminal history, that parents are happily married, parent doing 2 jobs, parents have not done drugs etc. At least bare minimum parents willing to take efforts to enrol them into better schools and doing research of which schools are better.

croon 8y ago

> They try to control for this by comparing those kids to kids who lost in the lottery. But this only tells us about kids who have engaged parents. You cannot generalise to kids who have non-engaged parents. > Having engaged parents is the single most important condition for getting a good education. If that was true then there would be no significant difference between the students in the study, since all of them had engaged parents.

jstanley 8y ago
Just because something is the most important condition doesn't make it the only important condition.
- croon 8y ago
  But it makes it the most significant condition. It was in the stated initial premise. And if they're all important (according to GPs list) then maybe more expensive teachers, better properties/real estate, supplies, etc is important enough anyways.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    > > Having engaged parents is the single most important condition for getting a good education. > If that was true then there would be no significant difference between the students in the study, since all of them had engaged parents. This does not follow. Just because something is the most significant condition doesn't mean that two things meeting that condition will have no significant differences. EDIT: For example, let's say breathing is the single most important thing to do in order to stay alive. That doesn't mean eating isn't important to do as well. If two people breathe, but only one of them eats, they will have significant differences in outcome even though they both met the single most important condition.
    - croon 8y ago
      Sure, but OP ranked them specifically to downplay the effect of teachers (and other factors caused by wealth). You can't have it both ways. Either engaged parents is significantly more important, or the other factors are still very important. And this discussion is entirely sidestepping the fact that OPs list is entirely arbitrary.
    - phil21 8y ago
      I think this is pretty simple and folks are talking over each other. Involved parenting is a blocker issue, not just a critical one. There may be other critical issues in the queue, but those are blocked on that first one. So the other issues being resolved may not matter at all if the first isn't completed first. That's more or less how I see GPs argument. My rather diverse education background certainly lets me see that hypothesis as absolutely true - but I have my own personal biases due to experiences.
wskinner 8y ago
Your claim is not true. If you factor out the most significant variable, some other variable becomes the most significant one.
- croon 8y ago
  Yeah, maybe more expensive teachers, for example.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Or more talented kids.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Richer or more connected parents maybe
silvestrov 8y ago
> there would be no significant difference between the students in the study I didn't say this. I say that you can't generalise to students NOT in the study, i.e. students with parents who didn't care to participate in the lottery.
- croon 8y ago
  Of course you can. You can control for the factor/variable you said was the "single most important", which is done through the design of the study, by your own admission. And then look at results from the other factors. Whether your factor is important or not doesn't even enter the picture.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Essentially this. It's not really the schools or teachers - they are generally decent. Some better than others ... but teaching is not rocket science. Basic education is not some magical, mysterious thing. It's mostly straightforward, and a little mundane. If you have decent students, prepared to learn a bit - which mostly comes from a reasonably positive and stable home - then all you need is basic things to get them to a decent level of literacy. Surely some systems are better than others but I think it's far more about homes and communities than it is dumping 'bad teachers' and certainly not about making teaching 'competitive'.

andy_ppp 8y ago
>>> but teaching is not rocket science I actually think teaching children is a really difficult and important part of society but I think many people don't value the contribution incredible teaching can make to individual students lives. A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve. Not commenting on the quality of this study however.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  I didn't say it was easy, or that it wasn't hard work, or that I didn't value it. Teaching is 'hard work', it requires educated, dedicated people, and it's very important work. But it's not rocket science. Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject, though they may not have the wherewithal or stamina to stick it out, or may not have the empathy/social skills to do it well.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Being a schoolteacher is risky - kids kill themselves over things that happen at school, or they metaphorically throw their life away with other stupid actions. A good, engaged teacher can help to steer children through that minefield. It's not just about teaching a subject. The idea that one only needs to be good at a subject to teach it well is bunkum. It's not rocket surgery, it's potentially far more important.

kinleyd 8y ago

I appreciate the first point which I believe is a vital factor. Regarding the order of the second and third though, wouldn't the quality of teachers determine whether there are disruptive kids in the class in the first place?

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
Not likely. My sister teaches in a magnate school in a poor urban U.S. district. The amount of bad behavior with which she must contend is shocking. It's entirely foreign to me from our childhood, and she has relatively little freedom in how she can handle chronically problematic students. If it is theoretically possible for the teachers to keep the disruption level low enough for much learning to happen, then the formula is a secret. It's very depressing, and it has left many teachers bitter, burned out, and I suspect more racist.
- kinleyd 8y ago
  Yes, I see what you mean - it's easy for the collective level of class disruption to overwhelm the teacher, however good he/she may individually be.
- croon 8y ago
  > Not likely. My sister teaches in a magnate school in a poor urban U.S. district. Couldn't we draw the conclusion then that wealth plays an important role? Which in turn also affects the pay of the teachers in the area, also affecting the quality of said teachers? > It's very depressing, and it has left many teachers bitter, burned out, and I suspect more racist. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, but what I think is depressing is that it leads to racism, instead of anger over systemic inequality.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - your-nanny 8y ago
    The teachers who can't hack it, or don't care enough to stay at the bad schools leave. Good riddance, right? Most of the teachers at bad schools I've met are good teachers.

ThomPete 8y ago

Yup. Good teacher don't scale. My son is in a charter school the controversial Success Academy which do really well (top 3% in new york state) even with kids who are homeless and living in shelters. But this is because 1) Parents have to apply for the lottery and if they get in they have to be engaged 2) School is run almost like a Catholic school in how strict it is (but with a much more effective reward/punishment system) 3) Teachers aren't part of the union which means they can fire bad teachers. They are also fairly young. This is a very different school than the one I attended in Denmark where I grew up but I have to say it's working remarkedly well. My hope is that the school will provide my boys with an understanding of self-discipline and then I will take them to a more free-form school (like alt school) in the second part of their educational lives so that they can benefit from the freedom to explore and find their own perspectives using their basic skills (reading, writing, math & music) Have no idea if this will work but that's how I am going to do it.

gameswithgo 8y ago

Assuming it is the case that quality schools will only work for the subset of kids with engaged parents, that is still a huge net positive. We should make every school high quality. I'm not sure why anyone is opposed to this idea. >Secondly, not having disruptive kids in class. If that turns out to be the 2nd order thing we can make that happen with sufficient effort too.

emodendroket 8y ago
> We should make every school high quality. I'm not sure why anyone is opposed to this idea. In the abstract I don't think anyone is; what's contentious is what measures make a school "high-quality."
- humanrebar 8y ago
  And what the cost is. We can reduce traffic fatalities to zero by lowering speed limits to 25 and building cars like tanks, but we don't. Why not? It's not a reasonable expense to achieve the goal. Everyone wants to do better. Just because people don't agree on means doesn't mean they are cold hearted bastards or something.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    ==We can reduce traffic fatalities to zero by lowering speed limits to 25 and building cars like tanks, but we don't. Why not? It's not a reasonable expense to achieve the goal.== Except we have lowered speed limits and mandated security measures on cars, just not to the arbitrary level you stated. We followed scientific studies that showed positive results of lower speed limits in certain areas and implemented car safety requirements for manufacturers.
    - humanrebar 8y ago
      Right, but 40,000 people still died from traffic accidents in the U.S. in 2017. To get that number to zero, the U.S. might have to drastic things that probably wouldn't be a good tradeoff. The existence of a discussion about tradeoffs and costs doesn't mean that some people are anti-safe-driving or something.

emodendroket 8y ago

> If "free dental, medical, and mental health services" were all it took, then no school in Scandinavia should have any problem with poor kids. But we do have problems because some parents don't care at all about their kids education. It is probably true that those aren't sufficient, but things like getting enough to eat and not having serious, untreated dental or medical problems are basic prerequisites to a good education that aren't met for a lot of American children.

mlillie 8y ago
Also worth considering that the vast majority of parents who don't care simply can't afford to care. Working 2+ jobs, they may not have the time or emotional effort to invest in the same way that more privileged parents with elaborate PTO schemes have access to. Free dental & medical (Medicare for All or similar) would go a long way to alleviating the pressure on parents and allow them the space and time to care. As would stronger labor laws to ensure all workers have access to a reasonably flexible working environment.

vinceguidry 8y ago

Man, when I listen to my mom tell me all the things she does for my sister's kids, who she's raising, it boggles my mind, and makes me a little jealous. With all she's doing, there's no way those kids can't not succeed in school, yet it's a level of effort that really precludes having a career. Engaged, stay-at-home parents amazingly raise the quality of life, not just of kids, but of entire neighborhoods and it's one of those things that you can't fake or buy cheaply.

Bartweiss 8y ago

As De Boer puts it, if there's any possibility at all that an education result came from sample bias, it's definitely sample bias. The standard narrative for "better schools" is that a trial program works great, everyone gets excited, and then it declines to mean the instant it's expanded. If they had lotteried people in entirely at random and still gotten better outcomes, I'd at least be curious. https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-the-most-powerful-force-in-education/ https://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/03/29/why-selection-bias-is-t...

Herodotus38 8y ago

There was a good blog post and discussion about your point here on HN 9 months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15007942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15007942

nunya213 8y ago

Outside the US most public school systems are vastly more successful narrowing the education gap between rich and poor students.

Karishma1234 8y ago

This comment is gold. Sample bias might be at play here and still that is encouraging. Poor people do not love to be poor and are actively looking to get out of poverty. One of the ways they do this is by taking unusual risks and imitation. (Trust me I was poor). Public education system takes away both these tools from them. The school you will go to will be determined based on where you live and nothing else. Because of this stupid constraint you lose a very critical market signals that other schools could have used to filter out better kids and nurture them better. I think poor children should have access to charter and private schools too but those schools should have 100% freedom to discriminate. Say for every certified poor kid that is admitted to private/charter school government gives a $10K voucher and you can admit only at max 25% of total capacity with such students. The poor kids and their parents line up outside the school. They have to prove that they are worthy of the seat by showing things that matter to the school. E.g. my kid is not a bully, parents of the kids have no criminal history, that parents are happily married, parent doing 2 jobs, parents have not done drugs etc. At least bare minimum parents willing to take efforts to enrol them into better schools and doing research of which schools are better.